Stacked Crooked
by izzylane
Summary: Just because you can fix the broken doesn't mean that they are still the same. Jim/Joanna pairing with Jim and Bones friendship.


**Stacked Crooked**

**Jim Kirk/Joanna McCoy  
**

Rated M for some mature themes including kidnapping, attempted violence, and references to sex

* * *

"Jim—please—I need you in sickbay." Bones sounded tired. They all were. "She won't let me treat her."

A few minutes later, her eyes followed his entrance from her vantage point on the biobed, watching, evaluating. Bones watched him too, seeing her reaction to him and frowning because of it.

He knew that she had seen too much, felt too much—was too much like himself, slightly broken, but still moving on. The big difference was that he had already experienced years under Leonard McCoy's watchful eye and had matured considerably since he was twenty-three and mad at the world. Joanna had not been so lucky, but had made her own way, pushing through years of fighting with a stepfather she did not like and making all the wrong decisions until she had ended up here like he had all those years, ready to be fixed by her father.

Bones stepped away from the biobed that held his injured daughter, gesturing to his nurse in frustration. "Chapel—run the final diagnostics please. I have paperwork to do." He probably did, but Jim saw the excuse for what it was—an escape.

Bones had no idea what to do with her or how to make her better. Better emotionally, at least. She would not speak to him about what had happened on Cerberus all those many years ago, and she wouldn't speak now of the violent acts against her brought on by her father's friendship with a man who had many friends and too many enemies. The past few days had been frantic with the crew trying to find Joanna on a Federation colony planet after a routine visit with her father went wrong. It had all been a surprisingly bloodless and cold transaction as the kidnappers had really only wanted money, but Bones' hands would not stop shaking and Joanna flinched when he tried to treat her injuries and he eventually had to hand over the responsibility to Chapel, with Jim watching closely, comforting her with his presence.

Jim didn't remind him of the cold hard fact that they were lucky, damned lucky that they had her back alive. He didn't remind him of their own scrapes and how it was chance that they were to be in one piece themselves after ten years on The Enterprise. He didn't remind him, but he reminded himself and then buried these thoughts so they were hidden from those calm evaluating eyes.

God, _Joanna_. She was strong, as strong as he had been after his many scrapes by the time he was nineteen. He wasn't stupid enough to think that she couldn't handle it because she was a girl, but it was different to see her bruised—his wrist was easily two times hers and her skin was so white it looked translucent next to his tanned arm.

"Are you going to look me in the eye, or are you going to pretend you don't know me like my father?" He jumped quickly out of his thoughts, realizing that he had been standing in front of her staring at her arms for a good while, Chapel long gone by now.

"I know you, Jo. We met when you were still a kid idolizing your dad and begging for him to take you with him."

She looked away. "That was a long time ago, Captain. I am not a kid anymore."

He nodded, though she couldn't see with her head turned away from him. "I know." He touched her arm lightly, unsurprised when she didn't flinch. She had been in shock when they first found her and then wouldn't allow anyone to touch her. For some reason, he had been the only one she could stand and so he had carried her back to a safe place for transport off the planet.

"What do you need?"

She looked small with her hair shrouding her face, hiding herself from everyone's concern. "I need to get away from here."

"Away as in off the ship?" He was worried about this. Jocelyn had been making angry noises about wanting Jo back home, but Starfleet had demanded they not move her pending the investigation into her kidnapping.

"No." She sighed. "Away from this damn sickbay." She sounded so much like her father that Jim laughed, stopping abruptly when she looked up at him in shock.

"Sorry. You sound—" He decided she wouldn't want to hear that so changed tracks. "Let's get you out of here. Your dad wants you near either me or him." He remembered what she said earlier and asked before he forgot. "Why do you say that he is pretending to not know who you are?"

"He treats me—he treats me as if I am his patient, a stranger. Someone he has to fix up before another poor soul comes along and takes me home, deals with me." Her words were brittle, years of bitterness pouring out in a few seconds of conversation with a man she hardly knew and had only gotten to know in the month since she had arrived on the ship. He was flattered, alright, but she was a kid, Bones' kid. He didn't need to have this on his head, but knew he had already plunged in feet-first from the moment she curled her arm around his neck and let him carry her home.

"Why me?" He wants to ask, but then realizes he said it aloud unthinkingly and she looks him in the eye, just as she wanted him to and he couldn't. "You think that dad never talked about you? We didn't talk much, but when we did it was always about you."

He didn't know what to say to that, instead helping her off the bed, careful to not touch the bruises on her arms and shoulders. He walked next to her, careful to let her go it alone so she wouldn't accuse him of coddling her. On the way, he used his communicator to let Spock know his status and to not get too used to having the bridge to himself.

They arrived at McCoy's quarters and Jim keyed in his code, knowing he was in for a long night as McCoy had all but told him he was staying in his office. Coward. Unlike most of the crew, Jim understood Bones' gruff demeanor and knew that it was covering a person who felt too much. Joanna being hurt on his watch had broken him and he was hiding until he figured out what to do. But this left Jim with Joanna—a girl, no a woman, hurting as well and too scared to be alone.

"Are you staying?"

"Yeah. I figured I could take the couch and you could take the bed. You need your sleep."

She eyed the small sitting area and its small chairs and table and he knew she could not see anything resembling a couch. "It's more a cot than a couch. I'll get one brought in from maintenance."

"You will be here when I wake up?"

"Go to sleep, Jo. I will be here," he said gently. She nodded and headed to the bed, collapsing on it fully clothed, exhausted. He watched her until her breathing became even and her features relaxed before he tucked her in, kissing her gently on the forehead.

What the hell was he going to do with this?

* * *

A sharp sound woke him, jolting him out of the awkward position in the chair, PADD and half-empty glass of whiskey flying off the table from his frantic arm movements. "Wha—" He heard it again, loud moaning, and not the good kind.

"No, stop!" Jo.

He stumbled through the darkness to the bed, tripping over a blanket that had been tossed to the floor, not thinking to order the lights turned up in his haste to get to her. "What's wrong?" He reached her, sitting on the bed and gathering her into his arms. She wrapped hers around him, practically burrowing into him to get closer.

"Bad dream," she mumbled into his shirt, "they got worse since I was taken." He went still, realizing that this was the first time she had mentioned it, wanting to encourage her to say more. She didn't. "Hold me?"

This was a bad idea. Jim knew this was a bad idea, but it was all Bones' fault. He had practically pushed him to do this, which confused him more than anything. How long had Bones known of Joanna's feelings for him? He closed off the tumbling of worries in his head as it was easy to jump and think later. He was good at that. Instead, he curled up behind her on the bed, grateful that both of them were fully clothed, hoping that he could tame his dick into not poking her in the ass as she didn't need that right now.

"Jim?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks for this. I know it's hard."

Damn, she was a cunning McCoy just like her father and he almost felt manipulated before he remembered all she had been through and that she wasn't really thinking of his feelings at the moment. He held her tightly because she asked him to and dozed off only after he knew she was asleep.

* * *

For the second time that night, he woke abruptly, but this time it was to soft lips tracing along his jaw and working on pulling up his shirt. For a moment, he gave in, feeling the growing lust building in his belly from the proximity of a woman who smelled clean and fresh from the shower and whose lips were soft and wet and sucking pressure on his skin. He grabbed the arm lightly touching his stomach reflexively when it tickled and the woman gasped in pain. Jo. He scrambled away from her, skin flushing, lust turning quickly to dread.

"Lights, thirty percent." The room brightened to reveal Joanna looking embarrassed and indignant all at once. Jim regarded her with a wary eye, knowing that it was his own damn fault for crawling into bed with her.

"You want me." She lifted her chin defiantly, practically demanding him to argue.

He didn't. "You are a beautiful woman. Of course I want you."

"Then why—?"

The fear and pain of the past week poured out before he could stop it. "Because you are in shock! Because you are my best friend's baby daughter that he is so proud of, loves so much, is so messed up over because he couldn't protect you. He couldn't protect you when you are growing up and he damn well couldn't when he finally gets to see you, know you. Because I have been fascinated for the last month by a girl who fights her way out of situations and then survives, survives the worst and comes out strong." He took a breath, clenching his fists so he didn't try to grab her again and shake some sense into her. "Can't you see, Jo? Can't you see how much this is killing him? Killing me?"

Tears streamed down her face and it was all Jim could do to not hold her. She was so beautiful, so whole and perfect that he wanted to wrap her up in a protective garment so that she never was hurt again. "When they took me—"

"You don't have to talk about it," he said, but she shook her head.

"When they took me, they told me that I was never going to see my family again, that they were going to hunt down my mother and rape her until she regretted ever being impregnated by my father. They told me it was my turn the day you found me, so don't tell me that I don't understand or that I am in shock. My dad did not protect me, Jim, you're right. He also did not save me. You did."

This was the most she had said since they had found her and Jim wanted to press, wanted to know more, but did not want to push too much. Her eyes were flashing fire and she seemed so normal, so much the girl they had invited on the ship a month ago, that he wanted to kiss her for her passion and call Bones at the same time. He also wanted to fall to his knees and pray to a God he didn't always believe in, giving thanks that they were in time.

She waited for him to say something for a few heated seconds, eyebrows raised, until she finished softly, "the violence, Jim, the rage I felt made everything clear. I know what I want and I know that I want you, even a small piece of you. This isn't shock or immaturity, or whatever excuse you want to give." She walked up to him, breathing the last into his ear. "This is understanding. I found clarity in that dirty room they kept me in."

"Jo—"

"No, don't talk, just feel." She kissed the corner of his mouth, becoming bold when he didn't protest and putting her hands on his face, tracing the scars there since Narada and every scuffle since. After dusting kisses along his cheek, she pushed him into a sitting position on the bed, straddling him. He took over then, holding her ass firmly in his hands as he licked his way inside her mouth to duel with her tongue, tasting the salt of her earlier tears, marveling in the fact that this was Joanna—grown-up Joanna, ready to fight bad guys and kick some ass.

She put her arms around his neck as he kissed his way down her neck to the gap in her shirt, unbuttoning it, realizing it was one of his—Bones must have borrowed it and left it here. He reached in and caressed her breasts, smoothing over the bruises with his mouth before looking up questioningly.

"They didn't rape me, I swear. They did…hurt me." She moved her arms to try to pull the shirt closed, but he wouldn't let her.

"It's okay. Let me see." She was closing herself off quickly and Jim didn't want to see her lose the spark, so he stood up with her in his arms, her legs swiftly wrapping around his back so she wouldn't fall. He dropped her gently on the bed and followed her down, pulling open the shirt once more to kiss his way down her chest, swirling his tongue gently around the bruises until she stopped fighting and gave in to the pleasure. He reached the top of the baggy sweatpants and paused. "You're sure?"

"Yes—I want you, Jim." At that, he pulled the pants down and off so that she was naked to his gaze except the shirt still covering her bruised arms.

"You're beautiful, Joanna. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise."

She smiled mischievously and beckoned him closer. "Stop saying pretty words and put that mouth to use." He did, crawling up the bed to her and bringing her up and over with broad stripes of his tongue and two fingers thrusting inside her. Beyond aroused now, he entered her slowly and gently, determined to treat her properly. Blinding pleasure pushed him to hurry, to not be as gentle as he could and he regretted his rough hands on her skin, even as she begged for him to hurry, to go faster and deeper, to be rougher with her. He wouldn't give in though, and shook when he came from the effort of holding himself still inside her, not touching any part of her hurt skin.

"I'm not made of glass, Jim," she whispered as he held her later. "I won't break."

* * *

She might be less fragile than he thought, but watching her talk to Bones the next morning made him feel as brittle as glass himself. He sat in the corner on an empty biobed as they conferred in low tones in the opposite corner of the room. He had wanted her to talk to him on her own, but she had insisted he be there. They had bargained down to him being out of earshot. He wasn't sure what they were saying, only that Jo was crying and Bones looked even more undone than when he had escaped into his office yesterday.

"I can't tell him everything, Jim. He would freak," Jo had said to him while the lay entwined on the bed. "We have to build slowly. I barely know him."

"Or me," he had added.

"Or you," she had agreed.

"He's going to find out the details later anyway from the investigation."

"I know."

So Jo took the first step in reconciling with her father—forgiving him for years of abandonment and a crime he couldn't be held responsible for—letting his daughter be taken. She hugged him tentatively and Bones looked over her shoulder at him, giving him a look of both relief and immense anger that was probably there from the red marks on her neck that were almost obviously from Jim's unshaven chin. They would have to talk soon. That was not a conversation Jim wanted to have.

"Why me?" she had asked earlier. "Why would they take me?"

"To get back at your father. And me, I guess. He loves you, Jo. Don't doubt it." She had taken that as fact and tucked her head under his jaw and fallen asleep. He had lain awake for hours, stroking her hair back from her face. She may have found calm in the midst of immense violence, but he was going to find the bastards who hurt her. McCoy had said as much to him before he left with her last night, face stark with both the thirst for revenge and worry for a daughter who loved his best friend.

"I don't care what you do, Jim. But they have to pay."


End file.
